


Friends with (cuddling) benefits

by LostinFic



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, F/M, Male-Female Friendship, Mutual Pining, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Pillow & Blanket Forts, Sharing a Bed, frienship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-04
Updated: 2014-11-15
Packaged: 2018-02-24 01:21:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2563010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostinFic/pseuds/LostinFic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A community radio DJ and a shop girl, sharing a flat and a not so ordinary life.  Every day, John leaves Rose a note with a “fun fact” written on it. Cuddling ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Rose drags her fluffy slippers along the worn-out wooden floor, rubbing up and down her arms and examining her breath for clouds. It’s getting colder by the day. Yet, she can’t bring herself to turn up the heat in the flat, it would be too depressing. Instead, she picks up John’s cardigan from the couch— the one with elbow patches he bought because it makes him look like a professor— and she slips it over her nightie. She pulls the sleeves to cover her hands even though he will complained she stretched it. They’ve had that argument before, and she maintains that it was already stretched when he bought it at that charity shop. Anyway, he has no rights to complain: his arms are much longer than hers.

 

She picks up her old laptop from the coffee table to set it on the kitchen counter. She opens the community radio website, squinting against the harsh screen light.  John’s radio show is too late at night for her, but she always listens to it online first thing the next morning while he’s still sleeping.

The intro jingle starts with a strange grinding sound— it’s actually the noise of an old dryer— and he introduces himself as the Doctor, his radio persona, a space and time traveller.

“And today we land in 1522. What happened in 1522, you ask? I don’t know, let’s find out! September 6th: The Vittoria, one of the surviving ships of Magellan’s expedition, returns to Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Spain, becoming the first ship to circumnavigate the world.  _Circumnavigate_. I like that word. I should use it more often: Let’s take a walk and circumnavigate the neighbourhood! Anyway, Magellan, funny chap …”

John goes on to talk, a thousand words a minute, about Magellan as if he’d known him personally. Meanwhile, the smell of toasting bread fills the small room, and Rose sets the half-circle table for breakfast.

 

“And now, time for a song.  _We’re all plastic_  by The Nestene Consciousness, dedicated to my fantastic friend, you know who you are.”

She smiles, not only at the dedication but at the memory of the night this song reminds her of. The night John and a bunch of other students had thought that it would be a splendid idea to dress up as mannequins and scare the hell out of customers at Henrik’s. She was in the cellar — a place that gave her the chills to begin with— when she ran into him. She’d screamed like a virgin in a horror movie. He’d promptly removed his mask, making his hair stick up with static electricity, and his warm smile had reassured her.

The manager was furious (wasn’t he always?) but it could have been worse considering how ill-planned the prank was. He was lucky they hadn’t blown up the place.

Afterwards, to apologize, the group of students had bought a round for the staff. She doesn’t remember which pub it was or what she drank or even what they talked about, but she remembers that he hadn’t talked to anyone else but her. It had been strange to have all that attention. A good kind of strange. The kind that gave her butterflies whenever their knees touched under the table.

They’d gone to a concert afterwards, although it wasn’t in her habit to follow strange blokes to disused tube stations near the London Eye. But he had such kind eyes and the faked nonchalance he’d put on to ask her to come along had won her over.

The Nestene Consciousness’ particular brand of electro-punk rock had turned their legs into springs. They’d bounced and sang at the top of their lungs. The crowd’s energy had turned the room into a furnace. Sweat had ran down their spines, and their throats had chafed from singing too loud. Their bodies had collided and his arms had gone around her waist. In the heat of the moment, she would have let him kiss her. But the cops had crashed the party and John had grabbed her hand and told her to run.

They’d driven around in his blue Peugeot with the windows down and the night air swirling in. Outlaws on the run, itching for mischief. They’d jumped a fence and explored the ruins of a medieval church overtaken by nature, foliage in lieu of stained glass and stone arches now the homes of owls. And there was a bag of chips and fireflies and a shared feeling of confusion about what to do with their lives. He had too many opportunities and she had too few. But this, this felt right. Planets aligned. She could spend her life working in a shop as long as there were nights like this one.

It was perfect.

Yet, when he’d invited her back to his flat, she’d declined. She had Mickey. Although, to be honest, her answer wasn’t as instantaneous and definite as it should have been. She’d given him her number too. He’d called the next day and asked if she wanted to celebrate Japan’s national pillow-fight day.

And they never stopped. She never said no, so he always asked her. His wallet was full of odd membership cards and access passes that allowed them to enter the strangest places: 17th century catacombs, the roof of The Shard, Regent’s Park after lock down. Nonetheless, they still managed to get into more trouble than she cared to tell her mother about. Trouble was only the bits in-between. In-between laughter and heart stutters.

She used to think that adventure was only for rich people.

Then her flatmate moved out, and Mickey said he wasn’t ready to move in with her, and John needed a place to stay (he’d dropped out of uni because he couldn’t make up his mind about what to study and therefore couldn’t live on the campus anymore) and that was it. He pulled books after books out of cardboard boxes that didn’t seem big enough to contain them all, and her stomach did a strange little flip when she saw his toothbrush next to hers.

 

They’ve been living together for six months now. It’s a bit of a hectic life, they don’t have much of a routine, she’d promised him they wouldn’t. They cook for each other, and she takes off his glasses when he falls asleep on the couch, and he holds her hand when she cries while watching  _The Land Before Time_.

The song ends and after a brief advert, John starts talking about cows mooing in regional accents.

Rose brushes a few crumbs off her nightie and opens the cupboard to retrieve her favourite mug— the one with an elephant trunk as the handle— and she finds a piece of paper tucked in it.

_Fun fact of the day: Caffeine can increase the amount of calcium that is flushed out in the urine which might weaken the bones. What I’m trying to say is: be grateful I finished the coffee and forgot to buy more._

_Have a nice day!_

_John xx_

_P.S.  Sorry_

_P.P.S. I finished the milk too._

Rose rolls her eyes, she usually loves these little “fun fact” notes he leaves behind for her, but this one isn’t as pleasing. Still, she can’t complain, he’s a great flatmate— that is, once you get past his little quirks like taking apart electronics and collecting “human artefacts” as he calls his junk.

She neatly folds the piece of paper into a crane and uses a clothespin to add it to the garland across the bay window. He’d taken to writing his facts on colourful origami paper for this purpose. Then, she sits on the window seat and pulls her nightie over her knees, looking out as morning light trickles through the frost plumes on the glass. She follows the pattern across the window with her finger until the pad is numb with cold.

She stays there until the end of John’s show, sometimes she loses track of what he’s talking about and zones out, but she likes the rhythm of his voice.

By the end, she’s still feeling groggy. She knows that it wouldn’t take much to wake up fully, she really only has to shake herself a bit, yet she maintains her sleepiness, feeding it with slow blinks and yawns. She doesn’t have to be at Henrik’s before one o’clock so there’s really no point in staying up if there’s no coffee.

She walks back to her room but hesitates in front of John’s door. It’s only fair that he pays for his carelessness, he knows how much she needs her morning coffee.

They’d done it before, sleeping together. S _leeping_  sleeping, not the other kind. Usually after a horror movie watched too late or a bad news, although the reasons to do so seem to have multiplied lately.

His room is pitch black except for a line of light between the two curtain panels. Thankfully, she’s been in here enough times to easily locate the bed. She pats the mattress until she finds his sleeping form and then the edge of the blanket, under which she slips carefully.

John groans.

“Rose?” He turns on his side to look at her with half-opened eyes. “What are you doing?”

“Occupying your bed until you  _circumnavigate_  your arse to Tesco and get me coffee.”

John bursts out laughing, a sleepy laugh, thick like honey. He runs his hand over his face and through his hair, shakes his head to clear his thoughts.

“Lemme get this straight: you thought the best way to get me  _out_  of bed was to get  _in_  my bed?” He snuggles up to her, molding his lanky frame to her back and pressing his nose to the crown of her head. “You didn’t think this through, did you?”

“Shut up.”

She feels his chest rumble with another sleepy laugh and she covers his arm with hers.

“I’ll go later.”

“You better, mister,” Rose replies but her voice has turned into a whisper.

She closes her eyes, breathing in traces of his cologne left on the pillow. She’s already drifting off to sleep.

“Is that my cardigan?” he asks as his hand slips under the wool and around her waist.

“Mmhm.”

“You’ll stretch the sleeves again,” he mumbles.

“Too late.”

He tightens his arm around her and she smiles, knowing he’s not really mad.

“Find another flatmate if I’m so terrible,” she jokes.

“Never. You’re stuck with me.”

“Well, that’s not so bad.”


	2. Chapter 2

 

John’s approach to waking up is the complete opposite of Rose’s. Two hours after his flatmate has joined him in his room, his eyes open and he bolts right out of bed.

He stops by the bathroom to wash his face and ruffle his hair in a way that’s less “right out of bed” and more “right out of saving the world”. It's a subtle difference but it's an important one.

He has long ago solved the issue of what to wear by buying several pairs of the same comfortable brown trousers with matching shirts. He picks one of each out of the dryer and puts them on.

“Right, now, coffee and milk for Rose.”

He opens the door and a gust of cold air sweeps in. Backtracking, he puts on a blue hoodie, he’s not sure if it’s his or Rose’s, they just put it back on the coat rack after a wash. The communal hoodie. Even their friends borrow it from time to time.

 

When he gets back from running errands, Rose is in the bathroom, putting on makeup.

She has mascara only on one side but she doesn’t laugh at his _Clockwork Orange_ joke which reminds him that she hasn’t had her coffee yet.

“Oh! Got you something.”

He runs off and comes back in a flash, proffering a tall plastic cup filled with coffee and topped with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles.

“It’s a tall, skinny—”

“Tall and skinny? Just how I like ‘em.”

She smiles with her tongue peeking out and John gets all flustered, running a hand through his hair.

She takes a first sip through the straw.

“Mmm, that’s gorgeous, what flavour is it?”

“Toffee nut caffe latte caramel macchiato espres—”

“Now you’re just messing with me.”

He grins, proud of his own joke, and she rolls her eyes.

“You think you’re so funny.”

“Drink up, Crabby McCrabbypants.”

She snorts then takes another long sip, humming with pleasure.

“Thanks, John. You didn’t have to, these drinks are so overpriced.”

He just shrugs and leans against the yellow door frame, hands in his pockets, looking at her while she applies more mascara.

 

She dabs a large brush in powder, sending loose particles dancing in a ray of sunlight, then across her face, some sticking to her eyelashes. The dry smell of cosmetics tickles his nose. She’s talking but he’s lost track of what she’s saying; wisps of hair have fallen from her ponytail, fanning across her cheek and his fingers itch to tuck it behind her ear.

But he doesn’t.

You see, he’s spent his life studying humans— almost as if he wasn’t one of them— and he’s learned that it’s the little touches that are the trickiest. They’re the ones who betray one’s affection the most. Ever since they’ve met, he’s been cataloguing those touches between them; he’s got boxes full of them in his mind: friendly, romantic, intimate, platonic, comfort type of touches.

 

He wasn’t careful in his cataloging the first time they’d met, her smile was so bright, her eyes shining, she’d let him wrap his arms around her waist and she’d held his hand while they explored the church, and he’d assumed—well, he’d assumed wrong and she’d turned him down. So he’d learned to be more careful, he’d changed his categorization technique. Sleeping in the same bed is firmly in the “friendly” category but the little touches are off-limit: caressing the nape of her neck while watching a movie, keeping his hand on the small of her back, stroking her calf when he’s sitting on the floor and she’s on the couch, holding her hands when they’re having dinner, these are romantic and intimate touches. Innocuous but meaningful. It’s all in the details. So, really, it would be inappropriate to tuck that strand of hair behind her ear as long as the "friendly touches" box in his mind is fuller than the others.

 

“Ian called,” she says, interrupting his musing.

“What? Chesterton? Why’s he calling you?”

“Well, he wanted me to remind you that you’re tutoring some of his students tomorrow.”

“Not tomorrow, Saturday. See? I remember.”

“Tomorrow _is_ Saturday. Sometimes, I swear s’like you live in a different time stream.”

She says it like it’s a charming quirk rather than the annoying habit he knows it to be.

 

And then, for no apparent reason, she takes hold of the hem of his t-shirt and they stand in silence in the bathroom doorway and that bloody strand of hair falls in front of her downcast eyes. The itch in his fingers grows stronger as well as one on his lips. Forehead kisses: friendly or romantic touch? He can’t quite be rational about this anymore, not when his heart is louder than his brain. The boxes overlap in one big mess he can’t make sense of.

 

He kisses the tip of her nose instead, and she giggles. She takes a step forward, still holding on to the bottom of his t-shirt. And he does it. His fingers move to her forehead, along her temple and behind her ear, tucking away the wisp of hair.

 _Shit_.

“Darwin used to measure people’s blushing,” he blurts out.

She looks up at him, brow furrowed in confusion, red spreading to her cheeks. Before he knows it, he’s babbling about Darwin’s research on human emotions and Rose is stepping away from him.

 

“So, tutoring, work, that’s good. What is it this time? Math? English?” she asks, while intently searching for something in the top drawer.

“Biology.”

The radio doesn’t pay nearly enough so he has to find odd jobs here and there, helping out people, to make ends meet. When it’s not tutoring, he’s covering shifts at Wilfred’s newspaper stand or it’s Martha enrolling him in various experiments at the medical school.

“I’ll let you get back to, erm…” He makes a vague gesture over his face. “I need to get started on tomorrow’s program.”

 

Willing her heart rate to decrease, Rose focuses on applying a pale pink eye shadow and lipstick. It was such a small thing yet her skin still tingles where he brushed his fingers. They touch all the time, why did this feel different?

 

There is still almost half an hour left before she has to go to work so she goes to the living room. John is at the kitchen table with his glasses on, reading on God knows what obscure subject to entertain his audience.

 

She sits down on the couch— a hand-me-down sectional from Bev, too big for the room but perfect to hang out with friends— and flicks through channels. She likes the corner of the couch, the way it engulfs her when she sits with her feet up. She continues to sip her overpriced caffeinated drink, gazing off in the middle distance rather than watching what’s on the telly.

 

“Oooh!”

Rose blinks out of her daze and turns towards her friend, recognizing this exclamation.

“Did you know that eyeliner became popular in the ‘20s after they discovered kohl in Tutankhamun’s tomb?”

“I did actually. And d’you know what else I know?”

“No, I don’t.”

John rises from his seat and steps over the back of the couch to come sit next to her.

“What else do you know Rose Tyler?” he asks with a wide smile.

“I know that women were not allowed to wear shorts until the Second World War but then fabric rationing made it more socially acceptable.”

“Is that so?”

“Indeed.” They grin at each other. “And I’ll tell you something else: jeans were named after sailors from Genoa in Italy because they made the material popular. See? I know a lot of stuff too.”

“’Course you do, you’re brilliant. But how d’you learn all that?”

 

She explains that Henrik’s 150th anniversary is coming up so they’ve been receiving a weekly newsletter with little facts about the history of the store which got her into reading more about the history of fashion. Then, she realized that the room where she goes to for kips— it has a chaise lounge and no one ever thinks of looking for her there— is actually the archive room.

 

“I sort of dug around and I found all this cool stuff: old clothes and sale signs and golden cash registers…”

“And?” John asks.

He knows the tall coffee is not entirely responsible for that excited look on her face and wild gesticulations.

“Well, I may have had an idea.” She scrunches up her nose and John motions for her to continue. “I was thinking I could do some sort of artsy, museum window display for the anniversary.”

She picks her sketch book out of her purse and shows him several pencil drafts, ideas she worked on yesterday during her shift. She has a tendency to temper her own artistic aspirations before any of it becomes a reality, but now she’s talking about presenting her project to the manager and John couldn’t be more excited for her.

“Mind you, there are people who do this professionally, there’s always one that comes to do the Christmas windows.”

She wished she had John’s confidence, always diving head first even when he doesn’t have a plan.

“Still, I could give it a try. What do you think?”

“I think it’s a fantastic idea.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

 

They discuss how to approach her manager for a while then John gets back to work. She drinks the last of her coffee and chews on the straw, lost in thoughts, her mind filled with ideas. She snaps out of it when her flatmate starts watching a video and she realizes it's time to go to work.

 

“I’ll drop by Henrik’s after your shift so we can grab a bite before going to the cinema,” John says while she puts on her scarf.

There’s a _Mary Poppins_ sing-along presented at the Prince Charles cinema, one of their favourite places in London.

“Alright… or should I say supercalifragilis…”

Her hesitation prompts a dramatic eye roll from John.

“Wait a minute! Supercalifragisit…”

 “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” he says.

Rose frowns in concentration and carefully pronounces the long word.

“ Supercalifragi…fragilisticexpialidocious!”

“That’s it! Haha!”

She jumps in his arms, and he lifts her off the floor as he hugs her. What a pair of dorks they make.

“You’re ready for tonight,” he declares.

“Yep. I really need to get going, though, see ya!”

And she leaves, humming the tune.

 

No matter how precisely he tries to calculate the time it will take him to go to Henrik’s, he’s always off by more than ten minutes. Today, it’s twenty minutes before closing time that he arrives. He stays out of the store. After that prank, he’d been strictly forbidden to ever step foot in Henrik’s again.  Instead, he sits on a nearby bench under a streetlight because it gets dark so bloody early these days. With his hood on and a scarf over his nose, he reads  _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_  until Rose comes out.

 

It’s only a fifteen-minutes walk to Leicester Square where the cinema is situated. On their way, they eat kebabs and discuss the various use they would make of Mary Poppins’ bigger-on-the-inside bag.

 

The sing-along event is a success, the room is full, they laugh all the way through and get caught trying to sneak in another representation. On the tube ride back home, she rests her head on his shoulder and it makes the evening even better.

 

“I think it’s going to snow,” she says, looking up at the sky as they walk from the station to their flat.

“Wanna wait for it on the roof?”

 

They make a thermos of chai tea and carry it to the roof along with a thick tartan blanket. Technically, they’re not allowed up here but John owns a lock-picking tool. “You never know when you might get locked up somewhere,” he’d explained to her once.

 

They find a spot sheltered from the wind and huddle for warmth under the blanket. When she pours the tea, the spicy perfume of ginger and cardamom mingles with that icy smell that announces the first snow. They discuss the vintage accessories she discovered tonight in the archive room until snowflakes start drifting down slowly from the clouds. One of them lands on the tip of Rose’s nose, and John laughs when she crosses her eyes to look at it.

 “Didn’t Jackie ever tell you your eyes will stick like that?”

“You kissed my nose earlier,” she says, catching him off-guard.

“Erm, yeah, did you mind?”

“No.”

They look into each other’s eyes for a moment before Rose decides to run her fingers through his fringe, making it stick up once more.

“There, better.”

She smiles with her lips pressed.

“Yeah, better.”

She turns her attention back to the tea but he doesn't. Instead, he spends the rest of their time on the roof being jealous of the snowflakes that touch her skin. That is until she moves closer to him and brings his arm around her shoulders. He becomes rather smug then, because at least he's not melting away. He can enjoy her warmth. And he's not going anywhere.


	3. Chapter 3

_Fun fact of the day: Among the Kreung tribe, in a remote region of Cambodia, parents build a "love hut" for their daughter. Different boys spend the night in the hut with the girl, sometimes more than one in the same night, until she finds the one she wants to marry._

_Have a nice day!_

_John xx_

 

With Rose’s family visiting, John expects to find the flat all tupsy-turvy when he comes back from tutoring. After all, Tony should have a hurricane named after him. As foreseen, there are crayons, little cars and candy wrappers strewn about and dishes in the sink, but it’s the sort of tent in the middle of the living room that throws him off. Several bed sheets are held together with clothespins and draped over the couch and kitchen chairs.

The room is silent, clearly her parents have already left.

“Rose?”

A blond head pops up from under the front sheet.

“In here.”

“What happened?”

“We built a blanket fort! It’s your fun fact, the one about the love hut, that gave us the idea. Come in.”

 

John gets down on all four and peers in. Because of his height, he doesn’t much like small spaces but he has to admit that this looks very cozy. Their camping mattresses are on the floor along with every pillow available in the flat. There’s also a string of old Christmas lights to illuminate the interior and hold up the middle sheet.

“Fantastic!”

He crawls in next to Rose.

“This place has everything: great location, easy access to the bookcase, music and snacks,” Rose says like she’s giving him the grand tour.

 

She hands him a bag of Maltesers which he eats by the handful while she goes through the music selection on her mobile. Ian Dury and the Blockheads starts playing and they lie on their sides, facing each other.

 

The light filtering through the paisley sheet casts purple hues across her face and bounces off the craft glitter on her cheek. He brushes it off her skin while she talks about her day with Tony. She stops mid-sentence when his fingers linger along her jaw, and he withdraws his hand immediately.

 

“Erm, so, what about you? How was your day?” she asks.

“Fine.”

She waits for him to say more but he doesn’t.

“You got into trouble, didn’t you?”

“Weeell…”

“Without me!”

He grins and starts explaining that since he was tutoring biology, he thought the botanical garden would be a better suited place than a classroom.

“Oh, not the monkeys again, John.”

He laughs and tells her all about his adventure with the students.

“I’m surprised Vicky hasn’t banished you from the place yet,” she comments, shaking her head with a smile.

 

She takes the bag of candy from him, eating each piece in two bites which drives John crazy, and he goes off ranting about bite-size food and the proper way to eat it.

 

When Rose doesn’t respond to his enthusiastic speech, he pays closer attention to her expression. She’s deep in thoughts, bad ones judging by her downturned mouth.

“What’s wrong?”

She rolls on her stomach, closer to him, and props up her chin in her palm.

“I told mum about my idea, you know, the window display for the anniversary.”

Jackie, being the practical adult that she is, had asked Rose right away if she expected to get paid for that. After all, she wasn’t getting paid for all the extra work she’d been doing lately. The assistant manager at Henrik’s had left and his tasks had been delegated to Rose until a new assistant was hired, but it hadn’t come with a raise. Jackie’s opinion was that Rose should focus on performing in those tasks in the hopes of getting promoted rather than fancy herself an artist.

 

“Well?” she asks John.

He takes a deep breath, searching for what to say. He knows Jackie’s opinion is important to Rose.

“Who am I to argue with you mum?” Rose gives him a pointed look. “Okay, I know, usually the first in line, but, well, do you even want to be an assistant manager?”

Rose shrugs and fiddles with her beads bracelet.

“I prefer helping out customers to dealing with schedules and stuff but I’d get paid more.”

“Don’t do it for the money,” he replies immediately.

“But more money, John! We’ll never make it to Cambodia with a shop girl’s salary.”

She sighs deeply and drops her head. He rubs her back in broad circles. Grateful for his support, she gives him a weak smile.

“I’m not better off, and you’re certainly not going without me…’Till then we have the hut,” he says in an attempt to comfort her.

Rose casts a glance across the hut, then her eyes settle on him, meeting his for an instant. She rolls back on her side and John’s hand stays on her, he smoothes the soft flannel of her plaid shirt over her hip.

“And Jack’s coming over later,” he adds, “so you’ll have another boy visiting your love hut. We’ll carry on the tradition! Have as many boys as you want and pick the one you want to marry. And you know how it is with Jack…actually, maybe we shouldn’t tell him about the Kreung tribe.”

Rose giggles, imagining Jack’s reaction, he would probably want to sleep with both of them in the hut.

“Mickey’s coming too,” she adds.

John withdraws his hand from her and tugs on his ear.    

“Mickey? Mickety-Mickey. Good, good. So you two are back together, then?”

She shrugs.

“We were never officially broken up, just… busy, you know.”

 

Busy is not the right word, beside her job and every day chores, she doesn’t have any particular activity taking up her time. What she does have is John. The thing is that Mickey only calls her when he’s bored or free, they rarely make plans in advance, which was fine when they’d started dating. But for the last few weeks, months even, she’s been in the middle of doing something with her flatmate whenever her phone rang. There was always some astral event to witness, some band to hear, some recipe to try, some mountain air to inhale. They never stop.

 

 “S’just, Mickey’s one of my oldest friend, I’ve known him since we were kids, so I kinda wanna know how he’s doing, dating or not,” Rose explains.

The hut suddenly feels too small, crowded with Mickey’s phantom presence between them.

“I’m starving. Let’s get some pizza,” John declares.

 

They crawl out of the fort and he picks up his mobile phone, ready to call the restaurant.

“No pineapples,” Rose warns him.

It’s an old argument between them, she maintains that fruits don’t belong on pizzas.

“Why not? I’ll let you know that in Africa they sometimes put banana slices on pizzas. Bananas on Italian food! How great is that? It’d be like lychees on a hot dog or coconut on haggis.”

Rose pulls a face at his argument which in no way convinces her to eat Hawaiian pizza. She’s tried it once and it was enough.

“They also eat insects in Africa,” Rose replies as she pulls mismatched dishes out of the cupboard.

“What’s wrong with insects? It’s full of proteins. And when you think about it, it’s no worse than shrimps.”

John hops up on the counter, converse-clad feed dangling in front of the cutlery drawer, blocking Rose’s access.

“You’d eat insects?” she asks, standing in front on him, hands on hips.

“I already have. When properly cooked, it doesn’t really taste anything. You’ll see, I’ll sneak in some next time, and you won’t be able to tell the difference between a grasshopper and a crunchy piece of celery.”

The thought alone makes Rose shiver with disgust.

“You wouldn’t dare. Now budge up!”

“Wouldn’t I?” he asks, waggling his eyebrows.

“If you think that’ll get you out of cooking dinner this week, you’re wrong.”

“It was worth a try.”

He hops off the counter and nudges her ribs, making her crack a smile.

 

Holding the phone between his cheek and shoulder, John orders the pizza while getting beers from the fridge. Closing the door with his foot, he hands one to Rose. With the chairs holding up the blanket fort, they’ll have to eat on their feet or on the floor— which wouldn’t be a first, they’d spent two months without a table because John used it as a raft last summer.

 

Rose gets the door when the pizza arrives and exchanges a few cordial words with Jimmy, the delivery guy. Unsurprisingly, when she turns around, she finds her flatmate slicing up a banana.

 

She’s struggling with a string of cheese stretching between her mouth and the slice of pizza when her phone pings. She grunts after reading Mickey’s message:

“Car broken. U come?”

Looks like she’ll have to ride the bus again today.

 

* * *

 

Rose comes back to the flat barely two hours after she’s left. She’s bought a bag of crisps— which she’s already started eating on the way home— and some chocolate ice cream.

 

“You’re home early,” John comments, “Jack couldn’t make it, got called back on the ship. Looks like it’s just you and me.”

She ignores him, takes a spoon out of the drawer and crawls into the blanket fort.

“Guess what?” he continues, oblivious to her mood. “Thursday night, the ratings went through the roof, more people tuned in for my show than for Harold’s show on NME Radio. He’ll be furious. Ha! Take that Saxon! I don’t know why he insisted on turning this into a competition in the first place. Either way, I won! Do you think I should tweet about this?... Rose?”

“Mhm.”

“You all right in there?”

“Yeah, sure,” she replies, although her tone makes it clear she isn’t.

 

John drops on all four and looks under the blanket. Rose is sitting with the tube of ice cream inside her crossed legs, and she’s eating directly from it.

“Oh. I saw this in a movie once, something’s wrong… women problems?”

“I’m not PMSing! I’m more than a uterus, John.” She glares at him and eats another spoonful of ice cream. “Ouch, brain freeze.”

She rubs her forehead grimacing and John is immediately at her side.

“Put your tongue on the roof of your mouth.”

“What?”

“Just do it.”

She throws him a confused look but does as he says and the pain instantly fades. She expects him to start a long-winded explanation about brain freezes but instead he looks at her expectantly.

Rose sighs.

“It’s because of Mickey… I asked if I could use his computer, yeah? And he said ‘yes but don’t look at my emails’…”

“So you did.”

“Yeah, he’s on a dating website, more than one actually.”

She sniffs and drops the spoon in the container. John put his arms around her shoulders and it isn’t long before her own arms are around his torso. The position is a bit awkward with their crossed legs and the ice cream in-between, but the hug is comforting nonetheless. More than comforting, actually.

 

The discovery that Mickey is looking for another girlfriend had made her really angry, they’d fought and it’s over now, officially this time. He’d been her boyfriend for two years yet her eyes are dry. She’s sad, of course she is, it is when something ends. But it’s like an old sadness, residual, as if she’d already gone through the grieving process even as she kept on dating him. And that is what bothers her the most: that she isn’t more upset about the break-up, not as much as she ought to be. If anything, she’s more upset about Mickey calling her out on her own behaviour. Truths she’d denied.

 

Plus, it’s not like she’ll never see him again, Jackie has practically adopted him.

 

When the hug ends, John keeps an arm around her shoulders, thumb stroking under her short sleeve. She’ll be fine, he knows, she isn’t even crying. But she’s such an independent woman, he rarely gets to take care of her. This is his chance to give back because she takes care of him every day even if she doesn’t know it.

“Come with me tonight, to the radio station.”

“What would I do?”

John shrugs, he just doesn’t like the idea of Rose staying by herself in the empty flat.

“You can choose the music.”

“Yeah? You’ll let me touch your precious album collection with my filthy hands?”

She wiggles her fingers, some of which are sticky with ice cream, and smiles with her tongue curling over her teeth.

“You’ll have to wear gloves,” he teases back, “Oh! And you can say some of those facts about fashion. You could be my assistant.”

“Assistant?” she repeats with a disapproving face.

“Ok, no, not assistant. Helper? Right hand? Accomplice? Companion!”

Rose beams. He takes the tub of ice cream from her and leaves the blanket fort, almost destroying it in his enthusiasm.

 

Yesterday’s snow had melted before morning but it’s still cold outside. Rose puts on two sweaters and a scarf over her pirates t-shirt, layering would have to do until she could afford a new coat (the last one was destroyed in a recent adventure: mud, monkeys.) John drags her out by the hand, and they start running towards the radio station as soon as they reach the bottom of the stairs.  

 

If she thought he was manic before when she was only hearing him, she doesn’t even know what to call what she is witnessing right now. He can’t stay seated for more than a minute, arms flailing around and eyes shining as he speaks about science and history. Rose is in stitches, tears rolling down her cheeks, as he re-enacts a meeting between Caesar and Cleopatra.

 

To be honest, he’s doing it more than usual for her benefit. Tonight, he’s entirely dedicated to making Rose laugh.

 

He’d showed her how to put the music on, and she presses the necessary buttons when he does a countdown with his fingers. _Parallel Universe_ by The Red Hot Chili Peppers starts playing.

“You’re barmy!” she says as soon as he removes his headphones.

He winks at her with a tongue click and she blushes.

 

Rose gradually becomes more comfortable with the microphone and the console, chipping in more often on what he says and asking all the right questions. When she calls him Doctor, his smile is so wide, she thinks he’ll unhinge his jaw.

 

They’re out of the station by 3am, kicked out by the DJ coming in after John.

 

Outdoor, a thin layer of frost, like wax, covers every branch and car, making it all seem strangely still.  The frozen blades of grass crunch under their soles and they leave behind a trail of parallel footprints. It feels like they’re the only two people left in London. The night sky is endlessly dark and indifferent, the moon shining for no one.

 

John told her once that there are more stars in the universe than words that have ever been spoken in all of history, and on a night like this she believes him.

 

John rubs his hands and blows on them to warm them up. Seeing this, Rose pulls on the opening of her mitten and he slides his hand along her palm, threading his cold fingers with hers. She contemplates their laced fingers for a moment. It’s so natural for them to do that, she’d never question it until now.

 

“Mickey called me a hypocrite,” she says out of the blue.

“What? Why?”

He looks at her, quirking his left eyebrow.

“’Cause I was angry at him for seeing other girls when I spend all my time with another bloke,” she says.

“What other bloke?”

“Don’t be daft.” She nudges him with her elbow.

“Oh, I’m the other bloke?” he says, pointing his chest.

“Yes.”

“Yeah, but you and I, it’s…”

Her heart sinks when she realizes he will deny it, she holds his gaze and he swallows, averting her eyes.

“What, John?”

 

He can’t bring himself to say it. He can’t say that they’re just friends, that he spends all his time with her only because they share a flat. But neither can he say that he thinks about her all the time, that he’s happy Mickey’s out of the picture nor can he say that holding her hand keeps him sane.

“It’s just… us.”

He squeezes her hand, willing her to understand.

 

Relief sings in Rose’s bones. Somehow, she knows exactly what he means. _Us_. Nothing more, nothing else.

“It’s us,” John repeats, looking intently at her.

She nods and this mutual acknowledgement, however ambiguous, that they are more than friends sends her heart aflutter. Their eyes meet and matching hopeful smiles blossom on their lips.

 

They wander in the tranquil night, silently agreeing to take the long way home despite the cold, just to make this feeling last. They cut through Dulwich Park, taking the wooden walkway across the ponds and past the willows. John is unusually quiet, but snaps out of his thoughts when Rose rests her head on his shoulder. Between the trees, they can already see the shape of their building across the street.

 

As they reach their door and John takes his keys out of his pocket— with some difficulties since one of his hands is still in Rose’s mitten— she decides to break the silence.

“Maybe we— I dunno, we could maybe sleep in the blanket fort tonight,” she suggests, fiddling with her hoop hearing.

She holds her breath as John considers her idea.

“Yeah ok, that— that’d be fun.”

He nods too many times and Rose wonders if she’s going too fast.

 

She goes to her room with butterflies in her stomach, for the first time since living with John she actually worries about which pyjama to wear. After a few tries, she finally selects the shorts and vest set with little blue flowers. She quickly freshens up and takes a deep breath before walking to the kitchen.

 

When she enters the room, John is placing her jeans jacket on the coat rack, he quickly turns around and scratches his head with a forced smile.  

“You all right?”

“Yeah, fine, I’ll just— teeth."

He points at the bathroom and disappears, leaving a confounded Rose behind.

 

When they’re both ready to go to bed, they carry their quilts inside the fort and settle side by side in the narrow space. There’s a gap between them, bigger than usual it seems. She hopes that admitting they’re more than friends isn’t going to make things awkward.

 

Soon enough, they’re giggling like kids on Christmas Eve, too excited to go to sleep. They chat about the radio. John wants her to come back, and they make plans to have their own show. Of course, the more they talk, the crazier those plans become. Broadcasting from the moon is mentioned more than once.

 

Inevitably, sleep catches up with them, their sentences become shorter and sparse until they are completely silent.

 

Even in the dark, Rose can tell his eyes are opened and looking at her. In the quietness, she becomes aware of the space between them once again.

“Penny for your thoughts,” she whispers, inching closer.

“I was just thinking that we should keep the hut.”

“Oh. Ok, maybe… but John…”

“Uhm?”

She hesitates, uncertain how to phrase her thoughts. She tentatively places her hand on his chest, watching his reaction.

“I don’t want any other boy in my hut.”

He smiles and tugs her closer until she’s in his arms and resting her head on his shoulder. She hugs him tightly with a relieved sigh.

“You won’t need another one,” he whispers, before placing his finger under her chin and guiding her lips to his.

 

* * *

 

On her way to work the next day, she finds a piece of paper hidden in the pocket of her jean jacket, she immediately recognizes John’s handwriting.

 

_Fun fact: You’re my favourite person in the universe._

_John xxxx_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it. Hope you enjoyed this fic and thank you to every one who has left a comment, I really appreciate it.


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